At one hospital in New Delhi! 37 fully vaccinated doctors came down with Covid and of these 5 were hospitalised.
Admittedly, these were in perhaps the most high risk very high exposure group, but so soon?
Reading the Indian press I have seen quite a few anecdotes of fully vaccinated falling sick and even in ICU.
Yes, I know vaccination is not a guarantee of avoiding Covid and I am as pro-vax as they come but this seems to be cause for great concern which suggest that the pandemic is here for a while and just as soon as the vaccine administration is complete the boosters needs start.
37 doctors all at one hospital? Very little information in that report - what vaccine, when they were vaccinated, have they sequenced the strain they were infected with Presumably this is likely to be a group that were vaccinated at the same time. It could be some new strain, but it’s seems more likely it was a bad batch of vaccine - manufacturing error or cold storage error.
The article below throws a lot of information at the reader about different kinds of vaccines being used in India. Scroll about 40% down the page and read up on the Covaxin vaccine used in India:
Covaxin is an inactivated vaccine which means that it is made up of killed coronaviruses, making it safe to be injected into the body.
Bharat Biotech, a 24-year-old vaccine maker with a portfolio of 16 vaccines and exports to 123 countries, used a sample of the coronavirus, isolated by India’s National Institute of Virology.
When administered, immune cells can still recognise the dead virus, prompting the immune system to make antibodies against the pandemic virus.
The two doses are given four weeks apart. The vaccine can be stored at 2C to 8C.
The vaccine has an efficacy rate of 81%, preliminary data from its phase 3 trial shows.
India’s regulators gave the vaccine an emergency approval in January while the third phase of the trial was still underway, sparking scepticism and questions from experts.
According to Bloomberg’s vaccination tracker, AstraZeneca has an efficacy rate of 70% – which is nothing to sneeze at, but is about the least effective of all the vaccines that require 2 shots.
I know an elderly couple who got Covishield more than a month ago (both shots) and now are self-isolating after contracting Covid. Their illness seems very mild though; no hospitalization or need for supplemental O2. So it looks like you can still get infected, but suffer only mild illness.
That’s true of all the vaccines - even if they don’t prevent you becoming ill they still greatly reduce the severity of any covid illness you do contract.
Anything that can keep the illness mild enough that you can stay home and avoid needing hospital-level treatment is a good thing.
I’d guess storage problems. The odds a bad batch would wind up in a hospital and be given just to doctors is a long shot. A batch set aside for doctors and left out too long is more likely. Or someone stole some vaccine and refilled empty vials.
Even if there were, those other personnel and patients might not have been exposed to COVID in the same manner or at the same time, so might not have gotten infected (or not infected yet).